Sutton

Moehringer, J.R. Sutton. New York: Hyperion. 2012. Print

First Sentences: 

He's writing when they come for him.

He's sitting at his metal desk, bent over a yellow legal pad, talking to himself, and to her -- as always, to her. So he doesn't notice them standing at his door. Until they run their batons along the bars.

 






Description: 

Willie Sutton was a real bank robber in the Roaring 20's through the 1950s, but what a bank robber he was. He was different from other gangsters: a dapper figure who employed costumes (hence his nickname "Willie the Actor") of delivery boys and policemen to convince staff to allow him to enter banks before they were open to the public. Although he brandished guns, he rarely resorted to violence during his jobs. He was a hero to the public who despised banks during those years of multiple financial depressions. In all, he stole more than $2 million from banks, real money in those days. 

But it wasn't all a romantic romp in the park  He did spend over half his life in jail. 

And when Sutton was finally paroled in 1969 from his life sentence in Attica Prison, he gave only one final interview, spending his first day of freedom revisiting the places of significance in his life with a single reporter and a photographer. The article from this interview was published in The New York Times, but shed little new light on Sutton's life.

What really went on during that Christmas Day interview among those three men? No one knows as all the principals are now dead. But what might have happened, what might have been said, and what might have been revealed at the sites they visited is imagined in Sutton, a highly engrossing history/novel by J. R. Moehringer. 

Sutton follows the bank robber on that day-long exploration of his haunts in New York City. From Sutton's birthplace to the jewelry store of his first job, from the spot where he met Bess (the woman of his dreams), to the jails that housed him, Willie and his two companions drift through the city revisiting his past.

Readers are taken inside Sutton's head to hear his private memories for each site, the people, the robberies, and the repercussions. Sutton's recollections, however, stand in stark contrast to what he actually tells the reporter.

Exactly what really happened and what are only Willie's colored remembrances? 

This is a fascinating, well-paced book about one man's reflections on the world of people and banks and the forces that brought them together to chart his destiny.

Happy reading. 


Fred
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
 

Moehringer, J.R. The Tender Bar: A Memoir 

Captivating and endearing memoirs of a boy who spent his formative years in a local bar, talking with the patrons, learning and experiencing life, love, and adulthood.